The TV series adaptation of A Brief History of Seven Killings is potentially headed to Netflix, What’s on Netflix has learned.
First published in October 2014, the book comes from novelist Marlon James also known for the novels John Crow’s Devil, Black Leopard Red Wolf, and Moon Witch, Spider King. The book has a 3.89 rating on GoodReads.
Here’s a brief rundown on what the book is about and what we could expect going into a TV series:
“On December 3, 1976, just before the Jamaican general election and two days before Bob Marley was to play the Smile Jamaica Concert, gunmen stormed his house, machine guns blazing. The attack nearly killed the Reggae superstar, his wife, and his manager, and injured several others. Marley would go on to perform at the free concert on December 5, but he left the country the next day, not to return for two years.”
This won’t be the first nor the second time the book has been set for an adaptation. Back in 2015, Penguin Books released a press release (now deleted – see archive link here) that HBO had optioned the television rights. That was with Eric Roth involved. Fast forward two years and Amazon Studios had then tapped Melina Matsoukas to direct the project seemingly moving away from HBO.
Back in that Hollywood Reporter article, they note that Jill Soloway and her production company Topple Productions were involved. It’s unconfirmed whether this is no longer the case.
Now, five years on, the series has been very quiet but as we’ve now posted above, multiple production listings seems to attach the project to Netflix.
Both previous iterations of the adaptation list Eric Roth, the Academy Award-winning screenwriter the award-winning film Forrest Gump and the upcoming Apple Scorsese movie, Killers of the Flower Moon is listed to produce. That’s still the case according to production listings for the Netflix connected project.
MXN Entertainment (run by Mason Novick and Michelle Knudsen) is behind the project who has produced movies such as Ricky and the Flash, Red Eye, Young Adult, and even produced Arq for Netflix back in September 2016.
Blue Light and de la revoluciøn are also listed to be producing.
Netflix has yet to respond to a request for comment we sent earlier this week. We’ll update this post should we learn more or hear back.